BEA 2015 Recap: BookCon

Day 4: BookCon

BookCon... wasn't a success as I hoped it'd be. At least, it was better than what I've heard it was last year where they added BEA and it on the same day. That's honestly disgusting, and I bet that it was reaaaaallllyyy unorganized as BEA was this year. Wow. But I honestly didn't really have a fantastic time here on Saturday since, the autographing area was downstairs, I'd have to run around, THERE WERE SO MANY PEOPLE, and everything was out of control.

So after spending some of my day at Central Park and its zoo (one of the landmarks my sister and I really wanted to head to), we decided to sneak a peek at BookCon and see what it held. But before that, here are some photos of the zoo that made me squeal and giggle like a little girl. 

The zoo overall was so much fun! I mean, it didn't have a huge variety of animals as the one in Toronto does, but it HAD BEARS AND PENGUINS and it was clean, small and gorgeously decorated and kept. What more can we ask for? Everyone comes to NYC to experience something new, and in this case, it was the zoo as I haven't been to one since I was a kid. Does a theme park in Florida count as one? 

PENGUIN! SO adorable, it followed my fingertips!

The cutest friendship—Betty and Veronica!

After arriving at BookCon, I went to grab my sister a pass ($5 for kids, whoa!) and headed upstairs since I already had my press pass ready. EVERYTHING LOOKED SO MUCH SMALLER! HarperCollins had a very small booth now compared to what it had in BEA, and I couldn't even find half of the things! The huge ceiling signs sure were handy. The official map was my best friend that day.

I think that the first place I went to was Capstone, where they were holding a spin-the-wheel-and-win kind of thing. I won Love and Other Profanities and also ended up getting Lois Lane: Fallout, very anticipated by me, and was the happiest person! Hachette was also having some giveaways in store at the time, but I actually had all of those books from the previous days, so I counted that out. 

Afterwards, as I tried to find Epic Reads to see what they were doing, Running Book Press was right beside it and I FOUND OUT THAT THE AUTHOR OF INHERIT THE STARS, TESSA ELWOOD, WAS SIGNING COPIES! That was a crazily anticipated read for me, but I wasn't sure where to find it at BEA or who the publisher was, to be honest! The line was mega-short, and Tessa was SO sweet! :)

Epic Reads then also had a spin-and-win with ARCs, and then I ended up getting an extra copy of The White Rose by Amy Ewing, which I already had from Wednesday, coming with my luck. :( But then, my mom scored Catacomb by Madeleine Roux, which honestly MADE MY DAY. I hadn't even known that there was going to be a third book in the series! (Horror = my love)

After that, really, was just going around the floor to see what the publishers were up to. Everything was merchandise or books that you have to pay for, since this was open to the public. I figured that I already had so many books (though there were discounts on the ones that they were selling!) and decided to leave. I ALMOST CRIED. Realizing that this is the last time that I'll see the Javits, I took as many photos as I could of the Centre, and left with shame and grief. 

Panorama of my favourite place!

BookCon could've been better. I only stayed for 1.5 hours, and found it really sucky compared to BEA, but if I hadn't gone to BEA, I know that it would've been awesome for me. But hey, I had so much experience with both that I feel like I now know the basics!

Here's my small (but awesome) haul, full of samplers of the reads that I WANTED FROM BEA! 

How was BookCon for you, if you went? Was it as good as BEA, do you think?